Watson processes unformatted data, i.e. natural language documents, and not structured databases, so part of Tim’s job is to work on ingesting that data and making sense of it. One of his current projects is cognitive cooking, in which Watson comes up with recipes for us to cook and is really awesome:)

Cognitive Cooking in the IBM Cloud:

So come with any and all questions about one of the most famous robots in the world:)

06

07 2014

Hello everyone! It’s been cold. It’s been snowy. But some of you people are still riding your bicycles. Being cold and snowy doesn’t stop the need for maintenance. Every other week is Bike Night at PS:1, and we’ve got our doors open for you.

Sometimes we bring in things to show off. Sometimes we teach. Usually we work on interesting bike projects. (Learning how to wrap bars, building a bike from the frame up, etc) Last night was playing bike doctor more than “here’s fun stuff to work on.” We had two patients last night.

Bike maintenance at PumpingStation: One

Patient #1 received a new chain and sprockets to replace a stretched set. And, the rider discovered the magic of clipless pedals last year, so replaced his platforms with some SPD pedals.

Patient #2 had some cheesy short term replacement pedals replaced with some very nice platforms, and had it’s headset rebuilt.

Does your bike need a tuneup? Do you have questions about picking a new bike this spring? Do you want to learn a new bicycle related skill? Come visit us, we’ll be gathering in the shop March 5 at 7PM.

20

02 2014

The Teensy name has been around for several years in the land of 8-bit MCU boards, but the 32-bit Arm platform introduced in Teensy v3.0, is a game-changer. PJRC (http://pjrc.com/teensy/teensy31.html)sent a few Teensy 3.0’s to Anna (our Electronics area host) at PS:1 with no discussion or fanfare. Thank-you, PJRC.

AT NERP TONIGHT, Ed will show the Teensy 3.0 hardware, Arduino tools, and some sample programs. After that introduction to the Teensy 3.0, Colorado Rob will show how he programs the Teensy 3.1 with a combination of tools and utilities from Eclipse, GNU, Freescale (manufacturers of the Teensy ARM MCU), and freeRTOS. ALSO – We’ll also raffle a new in box original aka white BeagleBone. Thanks to Drew for the donation!

The Teensy 3.X’s cost less than $20 and include all the peripherals you expect in a regular MCU. Some specs on the Teensy 3.1 are:

The Teensy 3.0 is (mostly) pin compatible with the 3.1. The v3.0 uses an MK20DX128VLH5 MCU with 34 dio pins, 14 analog input pins, etc. Other spec values are one-half or less of the ‘DX256VLH7.

The 32-bit ARM chips are internally much more complicated than 8-bit processors, but the user doesn’t have to be aware of this when programming them. The Teensyduino IDE from PJRC provides a familiar user interface and Arduino(TM) libraries that make getting from zero to blinky very easy. There are additional libraries that provide access to some of the ARM-specific resources such as the USB port.

I’ve been exploring the v3.0 samples and am pleased with their sale price and performance. My setup is the basic Arduino install + Teensyduino on Linux. After doing the Arduino install I played with some sample code that does HID mouse and keyboard emulation on USB. Making it work was pretty straightforward.

My thoughts on it so far are that the CPU is way overkill for most embedded things that you’d program with the Arduino programming environment and library.* Also, there is a huge increase in complexity to overcome to program if using “real tools”. But the Arduino tools are easy to set up and use. But for my embedded project, the Freescale CPU it uses has the potential to save a bit of money. Even though the CPU costs more than the AVR part I currently use, it includes a USB controller and a voltage regulator, so those component costs go away. I’ve been following a tutorial for setting up a dev tool chain for these CPUs using Eclipse, GCC and Freescale’s tools:

I’m looking at FreeRTOS (modified GPL) now. I’ve just gotten the ADC working with DMA which is pretty cool. My completion handler gets called when there are 32 samples ready for me, which is what I need for the carrier detect algorithm. The Freescale tools are pretty powerful for what they allow you to do, and an RTOS provides interesting departure from the sequential programming typical of Arduino development.

*Rob and I differ on this point…

NERP is not exclusively raspberry pi, the small computer interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago.

NERP meets every other Monday at 7pm at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago.Doors open at 6:30pm.The next meeting isFeb 3rd, 2014.NERP is free and open to the public.
Ed Bennett ed @ kinetics and electronics com
Tags: electronics, embedded, NERP, Open Source, raspberry pi, hackerspace, Beagle Bone, Element14,Pumping Station One

25

04 2013

NERP is not exclusively raspberry pi, the small computer interest group at
Pumping Station:One in Chicago.

There are a bunch of credit card size and smaller computers out there, but the
one closest to the Raspberry Pi in purpose and features is the Beagle Bone. The
BeagleBone is a credit-card sized Linux computer that connects with the Internet
and runs software such as Android 4.0 and Ubuntu. NERP first saw the Beagle
Board during Drew’s high-level overview in March.

The current Beagle Bone (~$89) costs more than the Raspberry Pi, but the Bone
has better perfomance. Tomorrow, 4/23/13, circutco.com will publicly announce a
new, more powerful, more featureful, and cheaper Beagle Bone. The price for the
new board will put it closer to the Pi. The revolution is over, but the
competiton for the smallest, most powerful, most versatile, and cheapest
embeddable computer has just begun. Adafruit, one of several Beagle Bone
resellers, is getting revved up for the new release.

http://www.adafruit.com/products/1278

Tonight Brian Chamberlain will give an in depth introduction to writing code on
the Beagle Bone. Brian’s talk will “…cover how to setup and run remote
debugging on a BeagleBone from within the Eclipse IDE. It will include a
walkthrough of the key steps for setting things up. Then a demonstration of how
to step through lines of code, inspect variables, and generally cause havoc on a
simple program running remotely on the BeagleBone. Also, as a segway from our
normal RaspberryPi discussions there will be a brief overview of the BeagleBone,
its features, and how it compares to the RaspberryPi.”

Find NERP and Pumping Station:One
at http://www.meetup.com/NERP-Not-Exclusively-Raspberry-Pi/
and http://pumpingstationone.org

NERP meets at 7pm 4-22-13 at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in
Chicago. NERP is free and open to the public.

22

04 2013

ERP is not exclusively raspberry pi, the small computer and embedded control interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago.

Tonight, Eric Stein, who is Chief Cat Herder and president of Pumping Station:One will take time out of his busy schedule to show us a Raspberry Pi and Python based system that sends messages by passing messages.

Eric’s system, which is currently in development, receives input from IRC (internet relay chat) and responds by playing an informational message over one of several louudspeakers located around the PS:1 facility. The Pi does text-to-speech conversion on stored messages and i/o logic and control to select the appropriate audio output channel.

A very interesting aspect of the system is the use of ZeroMQ to pass control messages between the Pi and and a server that does something important that Eric will explain. From wikipedia:

“ØMQ (also spelled ZeroMQ, 0MQ or ZMQ) is a high-performance asynchronous messaging library aimed at use in scalable distributed or concurrent applications. It provides a message queue, but unlike message-oriented middleware, a ØMQ system can run without a dedicated message broker. The library is designed to have a familiar socket-style API.”

Find NERP and Pumping Station:One
at http://www.meetup.com/NERP-Not-Exclusively-Raspberry-Pi/
and http://pumpingstationone.org

NERP meets at 7pm 4-8-13 at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in
Chicago. NERP is free and open to the public.

08

04 2013

NERP is not exclusively raspberry pi, the small computer interest group at Pumping Station:One in Chicago.

Ste Kulov (like “steve” without the “ve”) is the signal processing guru of Pumping Station:One. He’s also a great teacher who’s enthusiastic about sharing his knowledge of the theory and practice of analog and digital circuit design. Tonight Ste will show NERP what FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) chips do and how to use the chip manufacturers’ development tools.

Xilinx.com

FPGA’s are very fast logic chips that can perform better than microprocessor CPU’s in a number of high throughput applications. FPGA’s are programmable, but FPGA programs aren’t necessarily seqences of instruction like a C program would be. In fact, on an FPGA you can “write” a CPU. All the cool kids are learning to use FPGA’s, and you should, too!

Tonight’s agenda from Ste:
1.) What are FPGAs & CPLDs and what do they do?
2.) Why would you want to use one?
3.) Explain how you would program one using a hardware description
language such as VHDL or Verilog.
4.) Go over a quick Verilog example & demo of displaying “NERP” on the
4-digit 7-segment display on my dev board.
5.) With the remaining time, demo off my Nintendo DS video output
project to illustrate the neat stuff you can do with these things.

Find NERP and Pumping Station:One
at http://www.meetup.com/NERP-Not-Exclusively-Raspberry-Pi/
and http://pumpingstationone.org

NERP meets at 7pm 3-25-13 at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in
Chicago. NERP is free and open to the public.

25

03 2013

NERP is not exclusively raspberry pi, the small computer interest group at
Pumping Station:One in Chicago.

Tonight Drew Fustini will demo the Beagle Bone.

BeagleBone (http://beagleboard.org/bone) is an open source, low-cost
credit-card-sized Linux computer that connects with the Internet and runs
software such as Android 4.0 and Ubuntu.

BeagleBone is capable of interfacing to all of your robotics motor
drivers, location or pressure sensors and 2D or 3D cameras. It can also run
OpenCV, OpenNI and other image collection and analysis software.

Through HDMI, VGA or LCD expansion boards, it is capable of decoding and
displaying mutliple video formats utilizing a completely open source software
stack and synchronizing playback over Ethernet or USB with other BeagleBoards.

Drew will also hit the high points of a Raspberry Pi interface board called the
Pi Face (http://pi.cs.man.ac.uk/interface.htm)

Pi-Face Digital is the first of a range of interfaces to allow the Raspberry Pi
to control and manipulate the real world. It allows the Raspberry Pi to read
switches connected to it – a door sensor or pressure pad perhaps, a microswitch
or reed switch, or a hand held button. With appropriate easy to write code, the
Raspberry Pi then drives outputs, powering motors, actuator, LEDs, light bulbs
or anything you can imagine to respond to the inputs.

Find NERP and Pumping Station:One
at http://www.meetup.com/NERP-Not-Exclusively-Raspberry-Pi/
and http://pumpingstationone.org

NERP meets at 7pm 3-11-13 at Pumping Station:One, 3519 N. Elston Ave. in
Chicago. NERP is free and open to the public.